Epilogophilia: There Goes the Neighborhood
by L.M.Lewis
Summary: A bone of contention gets dug up one more time.


**Disclaimer: **They are not my characters; I make no profit from them.

Authors Note: As always, beta by Owl, Cheri and SusanZ, gratitude by Lewis**  
**

**Epilophilia—There Goes the Neighborhood**

_Coming home late, the judge and Mark are surprised by two robbers. Turns out the judge's neighborhood has seen a big upsurge in burglaries. Against Mark's advice, Hardcastle decides to organize a neighborhood watch._

_At the first meeting, and much to his surprise, McCormick is elected watch captain. Hardcastle is paired with his quiet neighbor, Hal Rogers, an engineer from a defense plant, while McCormick is teamed with Joe Hayes, a guy who owns more firepower than some third-world countries and wants to shoot first and ask questions later. _

_Soon after, Hardcastle and Hal make a citizen's arrest of two home invaders. The judge is confident that the problem has been solved. Mark thinks otherwise, especially after the guys die mysteriously less than eight hours later in a holding cell. The watch marches on, and the next night Mark and Joe encounter yet another pair of burglars who escape after a brief and one-sided fight. _

_McCormick insists that these guys were too good to be routine criminals. Hardcastle doesn't believe a word of it. Then the judge gets word of the coroner's report on the first two suspects. They were victims of a germ warfare agent. Mark gets an unexpected apology._

_Hardcastle is scheduled to patrol again that evening with mild-mannered Hal. The judge refuses Mark's offer of back-up. McCormick rousts out the slightly-crazed Joe Hayes to 'watch the watch'. They come upon Hardcastle and Hal being accosted. The bad guys get away with Hal. Mark and Hardcastle duke it out with the next car full of guys to arrive on the scene. They turn out to be FBI agents. _

_The judge and McCormick are taken to FBI headquarters and, while being questioned about their own activities, find out that the string of robberies was just a cover for foreign agents to get to Hal all along. They're warned off. _

_Returning home, they encounter Joe, who tells them that Hal is being held at an airstrip. They rush to the scene and prevent the plane from making a getaway. The weirdness factor spirals upwards as Joe appears with a mop-up crew that includes a fleet of black helicopters and unmarked cars. _

_The next morning the newspaper version is barely recognizable. Mark is convinced that everything back to a math test he flunked in grade school is part of a vast government conspiracy, and even Hardcastle is looking at the substitute pool maintenance man suspiciously._

**Epilogue--**by L.M. Lewis_  
_

Hardcastle found the box on the front porch that afternoon, obviously hand-delivered. He'd been in the basement putting back some of the files, and Mark had been assigned to 'keep an eye on the pool man.' Neither one of them had heard the doorbell.

"Is it ticking?" Mark asked as he looked up from the dinner preparations and gave the shoe box-sized package a suspicious glance.

"Nah," Hardcastle held it up to his ear and gave it a light shake. "They make 'em all digital now. Nothing _to_ tick."

"Then why the hell are you shaking it?" McCormick gave him a slightly horrified look. "You want me to run some water in the sink?" 

"Not unless you want it all soggy. Here, it's for you." He held it out so that the younger man could see the envelope sitting on top, not addressed except for the name, 'Mark McCormick'.

He wiped his hands off and reached for it cautiously. "Who—?"

"Mrs. Trewilliger, looks like. That's her handwriting with all the little curlicues."

"Might be forged or something," Mark squinted down at it.

"Then they went through all the trouble of getting that purple ink and the envelopes with the scalloped flaps. That's what she always uses."

McCormick's expression had retreated into a puzzled frown. "So, why—?"

"Guess you'll just have to open it to find out," Hardcastle said practically.

He watched the younger man pick the envelope up and slide a butter knife under the flap almost cautiously. One more quick, nervous glance at the judge, and he extracted a piece of pale lavender, French-fold note paper, its front adorned only with a monogram. Mark took a breath and opened it.

The frown didn't disappear all at once. If anything, it got a little deeper, but that might have been the consequences of deciphering. Amelia Trewilliger used writing more as a decorative art, rather than to convey information, and Nancy had always been the main social cryptographer in the Hardcastle household.

But by the second read through he must have gotten something out of it, because the frown had been replaced with a slowly dawning smile, heavy on the surprise. He finally looked up and said, "It's a thank-you note."

"Well, I figured that much. Probably sent you some oatmeal cookies, too. Amelia makes a mean batch of oatmeal cookies." He nudged the box in McCormick's direction, but the hint wasn't being taken. Mark had gone back at it for a third read and the smile was most definitely a grin.

"She says she wanted to express her gratitude for me stepping in at a moment of peril and lending my 'expertise'."

"'Expertise', huh?" Hardcastle grunted. "That'd be short for 'criminal experience'."

"No, just says 'expertise', _look_." He held out the note. 

Hardcastle took it, and then nudged the box again with his free hand.

"Okay," Mark lifted the flap of paper at one end, "don't be in such a rush." He slipped the box out of its wrapping, set it down, and opened the lid.

"Oatmeal," Hardcastle leaned and reached, "told'ja." 

Mark swatted. "Uh-uh. Who's that envelope addressed to?"

"The guy who's paroled to my custody," Hardcastle replied, with as much menace as he could muster over homemade cookies. "I oughta get twenty percent at least."

"_Agents_ get twenty percent. Parole officers have to ask nicely," Mark said with a superior smile.

"Hah, whose idea was the neighborhood watch, anyway? And who said it was a_bad_ idea?"

"Okay, I was wrong about that," McCormick granted. "But who wanted to pack it in as soon as the first guys got caught?"

"Well, I already admitted you were right about that," Hardcastle sniffed. "So we were both right, part of the time, anyway."

"Yeah." Mark nodded once. He pushed the box halfway back across the table. "Want milk?" He'd already gotten to his feet. 

The carton was fetched, along with the glasses. 

"You know," he said as he sat back down again, "it was really nice of her to do this, the note _and _the cookies."

"Yeah, well," Hardcastle mumbled, then swallowed, then started again. "Amelia's like that. Very neighborly. And it's a neighborly thing to do."

"Yeah, but like you said, I'm not a neighbor. I don't even have squatter's rights." 

There was nothing particularly disturbed in the younger man's tone, Hardcastle noted with a twinge of guilt. It was as though he'd accepted all of those off-hand statements without a shred of doubt.

"Well . . ." the judge said slowly, "you've been here over a year. I guess that gives you _some_ squatter's rights. And folks must've realized this wasn't really your fight. Those guys had already taken your stereo. It wasn't like you had anything else on the line, but you stepped in and did your bit."

"Sixteen months," Mark said quietly.

"Huh?"

"I've been here sixteen months." He'd repeated it with a tone of muted surprise, as though the thought had just occurred to him.

"Well . . . yeah, about that long. Like I said, over a year." Hardcastle nodded, looking at him with an air of puzzlement. "So?"

"Oh," Mark appeared to be shaking himself loose from some deeper thought, "it's just that, um, I think maybe that's about as long as I've been in one place, except for . . ." he frowned, letting that one trail off.

"Had some interesting neighbors _there_, I'll bet." The judge said dryly, then gradually became aware of a pin-dropping kind of silence, which he thought might have been offense being taken but, no, it was almost as if the younger man hadn't heard the remark. "So," he cleared his throat, pushed the box a little closer to McCormick's side, and quickly backtracked, "takes longer in some places than others, I suppose, but a year, or a little more, that kinda makes people think you belong."

McCormick said nothing, just got slowly to his feet and brushed the crumbs from the table into his hand, then picked up his empty glass and took all of it to the sink. He was standing there, facing away from the table, when Hardcastle spoke again.

"They wouldn't've picked ya if they hadn't trusted you, even if that wasn't _exactly_ how they put it."

"Oh," Mark looked over his shoulder, "I wasn't upset about that. Really. They didn't say anything that wasn't true. I'm a con—"

"_Ex_-con."

"That's a technicality for most people." McCormick smiled thinly. "But it's okay; I'd rather have people be up front about it. It's all the sideways looks I get—"

"From who?"

"From everybody who knows _that_, but doesn't know _me_," Mark explained patiently. "And around here, that's practically everyone."

"_I_ never noticed anything."

"Yeah, it's like when you meet somebody with a scary dog—it's on a leash, you smile, everything's cool. You run into that same dog out on the street and it's all by itself, well—"

"That's ridiculous."

"I kinda like to think of myself as a Doberman. At least a Doberman has a little dignity."

"I'm telling ya—"

"And I guess I can take Mrs. Trewilliger off the list. Heck, she sent cookies, not dog biscuits. That's real progress." Mark grinned. "You just keep telling them I'm housebroken." The grin stayed put. It was firmly in place in a way that suggested nothing was going to budge it.

"A Doberman, huh?" Hardcastle said in resignation. "I dunno, more like a mutt."

"There goes your twenty percent."


End file.
